Friday Ephemera
You shall not pass, dog. // Gear sphere. // Romanian salt mine tourist magnet. // Ants versus molten aluminium. // Experimental search engine ignores the obvious. // The crap-o-matic gift generator. (h/t, Kurt) // The roaring Twenties. // Knitted facehugger, $150. // Cliff Richard’s inner sadness. (h/t, Paul) // New York City snow plough tracker. // A fist-sized piece of the planet Mercury. // Wholock. // Night in London. // Tree frog rides beetle. // Beware dinosaurs. // Cardboard headphones. // And what if everyone was buff?
Cliff Richard’s inner sadness.
I’m sad now.
I’m sad now.
He looks like he’s posing for the photos under duress. Like someone’s holding a gun to a kitten’s head. “Smile, Cliff, or else.” Though for a man in his mid seventies he does have very young teeth.
I don’t think Cliff looks sad at all. He’s smiling and even giving a thumbs up in one of the pictures.
Cliff can’t help having soulful eyes. He’s an artist.
I categorically did not kidnap him and force him to pose for that calendar. I’m just a fan, and he stuck that tranquiliser dart in his leg of his own free will.
The Doctor Who / Sherlock thing is really well done. Poor John.
The Doctor Who / Sherlock thing is really well done.
There’s a ‘making of’ video.
Dogs aren’t what they used to be. I feel embarrassed for them, really.
Cliff Richard’s inner sadness
In the 80s a full page spread appeared in places like the Radio Times or Sunday Times magazine, including a quote from Cliff saying that more important to him than success and money was his ‘personal relationship with God’.
On the side was a picture of the man himself (not God obviously) with his head tilted to one side, incredibly earnestly. It was the first time I’ve noticed the phenomenon of Cliff’s sadness.
I’m no believer, but I admire it in a way – there are a lot of hardline Graun-reading anti-Christians (calling themselves ‘atheists’) around, particularly where I live, and I can’t say I’m on their side either – though a pal of mine dislikes the whole caboodle for other understandable reasons.
The calendars are a human rights issue, of course.
Wholock?
Both disturbing and cool at the same time. They altered SO much, so well, but forgot that Matt Smith’s eyeballs are not actually looking at Holmes half the time.
Still.
Someone has way too much time on their hands. One of those 1 in 5 British homes on the dole, I guess. Which leaves time for all that Art, I reckon.
Salt mines give me a visual clue to how the Wool books may end up looking when filmed …
So O.K. What am I missing with the Cliff thing?
All I see is someone with a strange obsession photoshopping Cliff’s head, (and neck), on various pics. If anyone’s sad in this little venture it’s the obsessive.
It seems to fit kate’s “Honey, I finished the internet” topic to a tee.
(Or possibly David’s friday Ephemera… Hmmm…).
Incidently, this post title of kate’s is right up there with the best… “Denial is not just a snowstorm in Egypt”.
Denial is not just a snowstorm in Egypt.
Perfect.
I want to be a denier, too.
The follow-up to “You Shall Not Pass, Dog,” is “What’s Yours Is Mine, Dog.” AoSHQ is analogizing dog/cat to man/woman, and I regret to admit he’s right. We may be physically weaker than men but we have stickers in our paws and we’re not afraid to rake noses.
Also, today’s school shooter in Denver (only the 18yr-old shooter died, but one girl is in critical condition), was a highly opinionated leftist. The local media, understandably disappointed that it wasn’t a Tea Partier this time either, stealth edits “socialist” from the original story.
Thamsanqa Jantjie translates Obamacare into sign language.
And via Debby Witt at NRO: Taxidermied Mice Chess Sets, bad and weird nativity sets, and Disney princesses as badass Star Wars characters.
Speaking of Snow in Cairo, Barbara Eden swears she didn’t do it.
Has he gone too far, is the question asked of this
The performance, entitled Art School Stole My Virginity, will see 19-year-old Pettet have sex with another boy on 25 January, in front of a live audience. People in the crowd will then be invited to ask questions.
Pettet wants people to question the importance of virginity and the traditional values that we place upon it, including issues that surround gender and sexuality.
(Apologies if this story was already common knowledge to everyone else.)
Leftist kookiness isn’t just the preserve of the arts and humanities anymore. Arielle Schlesinger, a “student of programming and social change” brings the moonbattiness to the world of tech with her musings on feminist programing languages:
http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ari-schlesinger/2013/11/26/feminism-and-programming-languages
The proposed language is, you’ll be relived to hear to be built around a “non-normative paradigm.” Which is good to know, because currently, “object oriented programmed reifies normative subject object theory.” She is currently “exploring feminist critiques of logic” to figure out how a feminist programing language might work out.
She is open to feedback, which is lucky, as there are some intellectual gems within the comments section.
Notably: “A feminist programming language is a language that respects the agency of objects, acting upon them only upon mutual consent.”
How a location of memory with an identifier and certain values/variables can give its consent is not explained, but this will be a good thing as “unlike most languages where anything is possible (Turing Completeness), in this language, some things are decidedly NOT possible.” And who wouldn’t want to use a programming language which is far more restrictive than ones we currently have?
Perhaps inevitably, another commentator sneaks an “anti-racist” tag onto the feminist programming, then another mentions a similarly themed “queer programming language.”
The latter “critiques the heteronormative, capitalist, militarized underpinnings of technological architectures” as well as railing against such tech tools of capitalist patriarchal oppression like binary and male/female adapters (no, really).
If you enjoy chuckling at lefty student types trying to sound intellectual and profound, it’s well worth a look.
Bart,
Leftist kookiness isn’t just the preserve of the arts and humanities anymore.
But of course no … the first phase of PoMo/PoCo’s takeover having been a complete success, the same names and ideas have thoroughly colonised everything from Anthropology to Area Studies, Literature to Linguistics, the second wave is now set to takeover all the other departments.
Arielle’s proposal is a gem – thanks for sharing.